The White Indians by Alan Fitzpatrick

Captured by the Indians, They Never Came Back

This is the untold story of a long-held secret from one of the darkest chapters of American history that is truly shocking. It is the epic story of more than 1,200 white captives who never came home after the peace was made. For more than 230 years, historians have written about Indians with racial prejudice, refusing to believe that white people would choose to live with "merciless heathen savages." Why then did so many captives choose to remain with the Indians when they could have returned?

Place Of The Skull: The Untold Story of Vengeance, Blood and the British Flag at Wheeling by Alan Fitzpatrick

There is a mystery surrounding Wheeling, West Virginia’s earliest pre-colonial history that has not been adequately investigated or solved for over two hundred and fifty years until now. The mystery begins with the name. What does Wheeling mean? Who gave it this Indian name and for what reason?

Wheeling is an English corruption of the Delaware word “Weel-lunk,” which literally means “Place of the Skull” in the Delaware language. It was told by the Indians that a white man’s severed head had been placed upon a pole at the site of Wheeling as a warning. Who then was this white man and why was he slain?

This book answers those questions by delving into the existing historical archives of the time as well as examining the 18th Century Native-American Woodland Indian mind to understand “Weel-lunk” through their eyes. To Indians, placing the severed head of a white man upon a pole was not a random act of savagery or a warning to white men. Rather, it was an act of retribution for a grievous crime committed there, and marked the "Place of the Skull" with the legacy of a place of white man’s evil.

In Their Own Words Native-American Voices from the American Revolutionby Alan Fitzpatrick$19.95, plus shipping and handlingISBN 978-0-615-29758-3

In Their Own Words: Native-American Voices from the American Revolutionby Alan Fitzpatrick

In Their Own Words is a unique collection of nearly one hundred and fifty never-before published original documents containing the speeches of 18th century Native-American orators who spoke in dozens of councils with white men, both British and American, during the years of the American Revolution. Painstakingly transcribed from the Sir Frederick Haldimand Papers collection housed in the British Library and on loan from copies held in the National Archives of Canada, this collection of Native-American speeches is arranged in chronological order from the beginning of the war until its end in 1784, re-creating an unbroken record of what was said by an 18th century indigenous people who had no means of recording themselves.

Each document reveals a written account of what was spoken by both village and war chiefs at a particular time and place in the many councils held with both the British and Americans during the war years. The reason these speeches exist at all in archives is that the white officers attending the councils had with them at the time both a translator who could speak the language of the tribe attending the council and, more importantly, a white man who was able to write in English the words spoken by the native orator as quickly as they were translated by the person present who could speak the language. Consequently, these speeches together comprise an unbroken record of what 18th century Indian orators said at councils held at Fort Detroit, Fort Niagara, Fort Pitt, Montreal, and Quebec City, as well as Indian villages throughout the Ohio Country during the war.

It is from these transcribed speeches that we hear, for the first time, the collective voices of a lost indigenous people, who were caught up in a white man’s war between British government and American rebellion for control of North America. Both sides rebuked the Indian desire for neutrality, and both sides demanded the allegiance of the Indians to help them defeat the other. In the process of choosing sides, the woodland Indian tribes sealed their fate that promised the destruction of their culture, their way of life, and their very existence. Faced with these daunting challenges to their survival during a war not of their own making that they were forced to partake in, from the lips of these Native-American orators we hear their innermost thoughts revealed, their fears of entanglement, their honor to past treaties, their anger at the intransigence of white men, their grieving for their dead in battle, their demand for food and clothing, their pain at the loss of their ancestral lands, their anguish at the loss of all that was once a proud and mighty people, and their pleas of a vanquished race that wished not to be forgotten by their great white Father.

Together, this collection of 18th century Native-American voices from the American Revolution serves as a unique, never-before heard, poignant and heart-rending testament of an indigenous people lost in the turbulence of American history, harkening back to another time, now gone.

Wilderness War on the Ohioby Alan Fitzpatrick$24.95, plus shipping and handlingISBN 0-9776147-0-0

Wilderness War on the Ohio by Alan Fitzpatrick

Based upon research taken from the National Archives of Canada and the British War Museum, Wilderness War on the Ohio tells, for the first time from the British and Indian perspective, the untold story of the savage battle for British and Indian control of what we now call Ohio and the Upper Ohio Valley, including Wheeling and colonial Fort Henry, during the American Revolution, 1777-1783.

In Part One, Wilderness War on the Ohio delves into the true nature of Indian wilderness warfare and how the lessons learned by the British from over twenty years of fighting Indians were employed in the savage battle against the American colonial frontier during the American Revolution.

Part Two of Wilderness War on the Ohio reveals through quotes from previously undisclosed letters and military dispatches the thoughts of British officers and white partisans fighting with the Indians against the American frontier. We hear the words of Governor Hamilton, “The Hair Buyer” of Detroit, white renegade Simon Girty of the British Indian Department, Shawnee war chief Black Snake, Captain Henry Bird of the King’s 8th Regiment in Kentucky, and Captain William Caldwell of Butler’s Rangers who defeated Daniel Boone at Blue Licks, to name but a few.

Lord Germain to Governor Hamilton, Detroit, 1777“It is His Majesty’s Resolution that the most vigorous efforts should be made and every means employed for crushing the Rebellion. The King commands you should assemble as many of the Indians as possible and employ them upon the frontiers of Virginia and Pennsylvania.”

Simon Girty to Captain Lernoult, Detroit, 1778“The Wyandots brought here their prisoners from Kentucke. There is no account of the Rebels leaving Tuscarawas. I intend to go there directly, turn them out, and burn it.”

Matthew Elliott, intelligence from the Ohio Country, 1781“Three prisoners were brought in to the Shawanese villages by a party taken upon the Ohio. They say they were deserters from Wheeling, a Rebel post upon the ohio below Fort Pitt.”

Captain Caldwell, Rangers, to Major DePeyster, Detroit 1782“Simon Girty arrived last night who informs me that the Delaware burnt Crawford and two Captains after torturing them. They came out here on a party of pleasure.”

Wilderness War on the Ohio was edited by Sylvia Rutledge, a Wheeling native now living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. As historian, researcher, writer and editor, she has devoted much of her time to understanding colonial Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio from the French and Indian War Period through the American Revolution.

Illustrations and maps in the book were provided by Anne Foreman, whose drawings have brought to life the anguish, hardship and suffering endured by native-American Indian and frontier settler alike who lived through one of the most dark and troubling times of early American history.

Click here to purchase a copy.

Frontier Visions will not be held responsible for items that are lost (unless it is determined that an error on an address label was made in our shipping department) or damaged by the United States Postal Service or International Postal Services. Orders shipped are not covered by insurance except for International Priority Mail (Flat Rate Box only) for which limited indemnity is provided at no extra charge and tracking is provided to major US destinations. Domestic Priority Flat Rate does not include insurance. All domestic orders will have confirmation and tracking included in shipping and handling charges after February 1, 2009.